by A. L. Woods
Fuck, there went our buffer.
I made a show of leaving the seat where Mrs. Patterson had been sitting vacant, maintaining a chair length of distance between us when I sat down.
I checked my surprise when Raquel spoke first. “That’s amazing that you…” she trailed off, futzing with a chain around her neck that dipped inside of her shirt. “…that you’re opening a place,” she finished in a whisper.
“Yeah,” I said metallically, staring at the closed door. “Congratulations on the book deal; that’s great.”
“Thanks.” She tucked her hair behind her ear, revealing tiny studs peppering the lobe, the glint catching on the offensive halogen track lighting above us. I counted three, excluding the hoop in her cartilage.
Those were new.
We became quiet once more. Ossified in our seats as we both willed Penelope’s door to open, or for Mrs. Patterson and her motormouth to return and fill the silence with her thoughts and opinions. Hell, I’d welcome hearing about Fomorians right now.
I could barely stand the cosmic dissonance that was pervading the hallway, my fingers popping the button free at my neck, heat burning up my chest. Why didn’t I have the sense to go home first to change? I hated dress shirts, and I was going to be sitting in one for—I glanced at the wide-faced watch on my wrist—another six hours before visiting hours were over.
It was going to be a long afternoon in our personal hell.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I was innately good at being surreptitious. Flying under the radar, escaping notice. That applied to rebuilding my life, or trying to, anyway.
My ability to remain furtive was not a transferable skill when I found myself stuck next to the guy whose heart I destroyed with equal measure to the day he had shattered mine.
It should be a crime to look as put-together as he was. Sean’s legs kicked out in front of him, hooked at the ankles. A white button-up shirt rolled up to his elbows, revealing the beautiful golden skin of his toned forearms, the fabric fitted around his broad shoulders. His hair reminded me of how it looked the day we met. Clipped at the sides, a little longer on the top, tracks weaving through the thick waves, as if he had been feeding his fingers through his hair for hours.
His set jaw was tight, his brows pulled together, creating a wrinkle between them, suggesting deep concentration. I didn’t want to do the small talk thing with him. We were above that, but the questions I asked him about his restaurant only earned me short and forthright answers, and the ones I provided him for his queries about my book were just as clipped.
We were going to be bad at this.
Before Sean had shown up, I’d found myself cornered by Mrs. Patterson, who had a lot of opinions, and zero interest in keeping them to herself. She took full advantage of it just being the two of us to needle me.
Mrs. Patterson was fairer in coloring than Dougie, and if it weren’t for her opening her mouth, I would have never picked up on the relationship—though I should have seen it in her eyes, which were the same shade of green as Dougie’s.
The similarity didn’t end there. She was just as straight to the point as he was, too.
Which meant she hadn’t cared to spare the feelings of an otherwise stranger—yours truly—when it had just been her and me playing the waiting game.
“Connie and I want you two to figure it out,” she told me. Her Irish expat cadence made it come out sounding like a demand…and something told me it was just that.
I dutifully served her with a short laugh, bitter to my ears, but I couldn’t ignore the way my skin sizzled under her scrutiny. “It’s not that simple,” I replied.
“Nonsense, girl,” she admonished. “Love is simple. It’s the things you allow to get between it that make it complicated.” She took my hand in her leathery palm, looping our fingers together, before placing her other hand on top. “Now, Sean’s a good boy, and I understand he’s made some mistakes, but I imagine so have you.”
All I could do was blink at her.
“Or were you canonized?” she continued. “Shall I call you Saint Raquel of South Boston?”
I hadn’t bothered to question how she knew where I was from. Something told me that Mrs. Patterson wasn’t just gregarious and pushy out of habit, but that she genuinely knew something about everyone. “He comes from a wonderful family, and he would take good care of you.”
What year was it again? Oh, right, two-thousand-and-nine.
“I don’t want anyone to take care of me,” I muttered, tucking my hooked ankles underneath my chair. I was managing just fine on my own…or at least, I was trying to. Some days were harder than others. And I suspected those were the days she was talking about.
“You would dare to make a fool out of an old woman?” she asked unceremoniously, her brows tipping into a frown.
For the record, I thought she was playing up her age. She couldn’t have been older than her late fifties.
“We all need someone; we all want to feel cared for.” She tilted her head my way. “We all desire love, there’s no shame in that.”
“With all due respect,” I began, sniffing the sterility in the air, “I think you’re oversimplifying something that is far more complicated than either you or Mrs. Tavares want to acknowledge.”
And overstepping, quite fucking frankly.
“My dear,” she announced, releasing my hand. She tilted her head back to appraise me behind her bifocals that had slid down the bridge of her skinny nose. The backs of her fingers were warm when they brushed my hair from my face. Then, with an adroitness that could have belonged to Mr. Miyagi in The Karate Kid, she plucked the chain that hung inside my shirt, bringing Sean’s ring that I had strung on it to her eye level.
My stomach sank to the reception desk on the first floor, my mouth popping open to protest, though no sound came out.
Damn broad must have been a clairvoyant or could see through clothes or some shit.
Recognition lit up in her face as she concentrated on the ring, a knowing smile slanting her lips as she traced over the delicate grooves and details etched on the band. “Connie wore this ring for over thirty years; I could spot it at the bottom of the ocean. She entrusted it to her son when he said he wanted to marry you, and you declined, yet you’re wearing it around your neck. Now, I don’t consider myself to be the most fashionable woman, but I don’t know of anyone who wears the ring of someone they don’t love around their neck, close to their heart, do you?”
My mouth hung open, rendering me speechless.
Mrs. Patterson’s sigh was that of contentment before she spoke. “It would seem that I’m not oversimplifying anything.” Her eyes twinkled as I withered in my chair. “In fact, I believe it’s you two fighting what God has long since intended.”
I spared myself what would have been a likely inexorable conversation if I made the mistake of informing her I did not believe in her God.
I didn’t believe in anything, really.
But damn her if I couldn’t deny that the frisson of energy between Sean and I didn’t still exist. I felt it right now. It was heavy, all-consuming, and unbridled. A shatterproof connection that, despite everything that had happened, still held me in its tight grasp. I didn’t think it would ever let me go. It made my heart race and my blood pressure kick skyward. Every hair on my head seemed to have an acute awareness that I would never escape this hold he had on me, even when he wasn’t trying.
I wanted to be apathetic, to find the woman I was almost a year ago. The one who didn’t care about anything. That woman had died, though. And what I was now was a feeling mess of unaddressed emotions that I had wanted to suppress because the latter made me susceptible to getting hurt again.
I was tired of being hurt, of being dragged through the mud, of trusting people only to have them betray me. Mrs. Patterson was wrong; I wasn’t a saint. I knew I was far from perfect, but I didn’t know how to look past him digging through my history to give him a one-up. It was manipulative, and after eve
rything Cash and my ma had put me through …the things they’d done to keep me in line, it was the last thing I wanted from Sean. The feeling was too familiar, and I had promised myself after what happened with Cash that I would never find myself in that position again.
And yet, my heart ached for the tall husk of the man who sat near me. The smarting of pain brought me back to the present.
“We gotta figure this out,” I finally said after Mrs. Patterson didn’t return my mental SOS call from wherever the fuck she’d wandered off to. It didn’t take that long to get a coffee, and I suspected the real reason for her scenic route detour around the entire building must have been to ensure that I took the bait on the request she had dropped in my lap all of ten minutes after exchanging my first words with her.
Sean’s dark eyes were vacuous when they landed on me, his broad chest rising and falling with slow, timed breaths. “Figure what out?” he asked, pulling me from my reverie.
“How to…coexist,” I said, wiping my sweaty palms along the insides of my thighs.
He studied me for a moment more before he leaned back in his seat, draping his arm across the empty chair that separated us, and asked, “Aren’t we doing that already?”
I thought he meant it as a joke, but when his face didn’t transform into a smile, my heart sank. “I just want us to be comfortable around each other.” I placed a palm against my chest where the safeguarded ring lived inside of my shirt once more, away from prying eyes.
Sean released the back of the chair, losing the false confident disposition he was trying to uphold. “It’s impossible, Raquel.” He fiddled with the gold links of his watch, probably spurred by nerves to busy himself. “I broke your heart, and you broke mine. There will be no semblance of normality or comfort for you and me in a platonic sense.”
“So, you don’t even try?” I whispered.
A cloud of sadness passed over his face before it hardened into an emotion I was more than familiar with—his resentment. Sean threaded a hand through his hair before he dropped it in his lap and shook his head.
My tongue swiped over the dry crack in my bottom lip, my throat working with my response. “I see.”
The protracted silence spilled between us like a bucket of ice-cold water. I shivered as the air conditioner kicked on, sending a blast of cold air directly at me from the vent above me. Someone called for a doctor over the intercom system. Nurses shuffled by us, the sound of their rubber Crocs squeaking against the polished floor.
Dougie appeared from the room, embracing Sean before hooking his hands on the back of his neck, his roving eyes searching the halls desperately for his mother. We promised to send her in there when she got back. He was hesitant to enter the room once more, a look of concern passing between us. I made my best attempt at a weak smile to encourage him that everything was fine. It was the sound of Penelope groaning as another contraction came on that lured Dougie back into the room with the speed of an Olympic runner.
Another distraction, gone.
“How long are you back for?” Sean asked his shoes. The question was for me, but it didn’t escape my notice that he resisted the urge to make eye contact with me.
“I’m not sure yet,” I said, and I wasn’t. I had been staying with Platonic Paul—a nickname he absolutely despised—in Malibu for the last couple of months, but I’d brought everything with me when I returned to Boston two weeks ago…just in case. Of what, I didn’t know, but all my worldly possessions were with me. I stowed them away in the guest room at Penelope and Dougie’s. “I might stay.”
He swung his stare at me, his eyes burning as if I’d just given him a death sentence. Right. Being stuck in my presence, never mind in the same state, might have been the worst thing to happen to him in a long time.
“Maybe not forever, but for now,” I reassured. I wasn’t sure where I wanted to be anymore. The contrast between the east and west coasts were indisputable. Paul’s house was stunning, he had beach access right from his back porch, and I spent countless mornings watching the sunrise. California was beautiful, the temperatures balmy. I didn’t miss snow or the mercurial temperament of mother nature of the Northeast.
But my heart didn’t sing there. As soon as the plane touched down at Logan, my insides hummed, my skin had prickled with a sense of awareness and familiarity that this was home. It always had been.
Sean exhaled loudly enough for me to feel its vibration in my bones. “Right.”
“Just until I can decide where I want to be.”
“Yah huh,” he grunted, slouching in his seat, his breath coming in tight through his nose.
“Is this how it’s going to be between you and me?” I asked, my patience slipping. “You being surly and refusing to have a real conversation?”
One of his thick brows lifted, his jaw growing rigid. “You want real now?” It came out of him like a growl.
My heart raced, the chambers threatening to rupture as he held me in his stare. “I think we deserve it, don’t you?”
He laughed through his nose, though his expression remained impassive. “That’s funny, Raquel.” He said my name like it was acid.
“What’s so funny about that?” I asked, swallowing.
Sean kneaded his right shoulder with his hand, concentrating on the oversized windows that lined the hall. “You have an apartment in California on a month-to-month lease?” he asked, changing the subject.
“No.”
His eyes narrowed. “Were you holed up in that inn all this time?”
“No.” I didn’t think he’d care to learn that I’d stayed with another man, even if it was purely platonic.
Sean threw his head back with a grunt, then glared at me. “You wanted a real conversation, Raquel? Let’s have a real conversation.”
We were engaged in this song and dance because I wanted it. I blew out a breath that puffed my cheeks. Fine, I’d tell him. “I was staying with my literary agent.”
His lips thinned. “Your literary agent?”
“Yes.”
He nodded, but I saw something bitter settle in his eyes. “So, you could live with another person, just not me.” He hooked his hands behind his neck, looking at the tiled ceiling. “This agent. Is it a man?”
I jerked my head away. “Does it matter?” I regretted my response—which was an indirect acknowledgement of his suspicion—immediately.
That was all the confirmation he needed. “Does it matter to me that you could live with another man when I couldn’t get the same commitment out of you without falling apart first?” he demanded, the muscle in his jaw flexing. “Un-fucking-believable.”
“It wasn’t like that,” I rushed out. But it didn’t matter, his expression told me he’d already made up his mind.
“Nah, I get it, Raquel,” he said with a sniff, scraping a hand over his face. “I wasn’t good enough. It’s fine.”
I opened my mouth to insist that wasn’t true, but then it occurred to me that we were venturing down a road we didn’t need to be on again. There was a barricade obstructing that trajectory in our lives, and we didn’t belong on it anymore. “Let’s not rehash this, Sean.”
“Why not?” he pressed, turning his upper body to regard me. “This is what’s real. Real is uncomfortable.”
This was not what I meant by having a real conversation, and he knew it. I stood up on trembling legs, my feet carrying me away from him before his voice slammed at my back.
“Don’t walk away from me, Hemingway. I’m so sick of it.”
The biting usage of the nickname made my head spin. Whipping around on my heel, I glared at him. “I’m not walking away from you. I’m going to pee, Slim.”
He recoiled at the usage of my moniker for him, rage simmering in his expression. “Whatever,” he spat.
Prick.
Plodding to the bathroom, I splashed cold water on my face, relieved that I hadn’t bothered trying to put on war paint today. I didn’t want to do anything that might have made it appear a
s if I was trying to impress him.
I wasn’t.
Drying off my face with a couple of sheets of paper towel, I took deep, fortifying breaths. He was just an ex-boyfriend. No different from Cash.
Okay, a lot different from Cash. Still an ex, though. I knew how to navigate this, and I wouldn’t make the same mistakes I did before. Even if my heart was ready to leap out of my chest and land directly in his wide palm with a white flag of surrender.
Wouldn’t that be poetic justice?
Sean didn’t look at me when I settled back in the seat I had abandoned, maintaining the chair length distance between us.
“Sorry for losing my cool,” he muttered under his breath.
The apology went unacknowledged. I merely pushed back on one of my cuticles, stealing a glance at the clock. Ten minutes to three. Just a few more hours before I could excuse myself and go back to my friend’s place and attempt to sleep through my anxiety.
“I’m sorry about a lot of things,” he said a little louder. My thumbnail paused on the cuticle I was working on.
Don’t ask, don’t ask.
But I did. “Like what?”
I watched him from the corner of my eye. His cheek tented, his tongue probing the inside of it.
“For what happened in California.”
The memory replayed in my mind. That familiar sting burned the back of my lids, but I shook my head, the sensation dissipating. “It shouldn’t have happened,” I finished for him.
He was silent for a split second before he nodded. “Not like that, no.” He stirred in his seat, leaning back. “My anger blinded me…it often does with you.” He concentrated on the muted television suspended from the ceiling, his stare vacant.
I was his Achilles’ heel, and he was my unacknowledged kryptonite.
The chain around my neck grew heavy as I recognized what was the right thing to do. “Do you want your ring back?” I asked.
Sean’s face was a blank canvas when he met my eyes. It looked as though he forgot to breathe as I slid the chain free and revealed the ring tucked inside of my shirt. His nostrils flared as my fingers brushed against the setting. After a beat of a second, I moved to lift the chain over my head, but he caught my hands.